How at last David came to the edge of the stream again, with the weight of St. Pierre Audemard on his shoulders, was a torturing nightmare which would never be quite clear in his brain.  The details were obliterated in the vast agony of the thing.  He knew that he fought as he had never fought before; that he stumbled again and again in the fire-muck; that he was burned, and blinded, and his brain was sick.  But he held to St. Pierre, with his twisted, broken leg, knowing that he would die if he dropped him into the flesh-devouring heat of the smoldering debris under his feet.  Toward the end he was conscious of St. Pierre’s moaning, and then of his voice speaking to him.  After that he came to the water and fell down in the edge of it with St. Pierre, and inside his head everything went as black as the world over which the fire had swept.

He did not know how terribly he was hurt.  He did not feel pain after the darkness came.  Yet he sensed certain things.  He knew that over him St. Pierre was shouting.  For days, it seemed, he could hear nothing but that great voice bellowing away in the interminable distance.  And then came other voices, now near and now far, and after that he seemed to rise up and float among the clouds, and for a long time he heard no other sound and felt no movement, but was like one dead.

Something soft and gentle and comforting roused him out of darkness.  He did not move, he did not open his eyes for a time, while reason came to him.  He heard a voice, and it was a woman’s voice, speaking softly, and another voice replied to it.  Then he heard gentle movement, and some one went away from him, and he heard the almost noiseless opening and closing of a door.  A very little he began to see.  He was in a room, with a patch of sunlight on the wall.  Also, he was in a bed.  And that gentle, comforting hand was still stroking his forehead and hair, light as thistledown.  He opened his eyes wider and looked up.  His heart gave a great throb.  Over him was a glorious, tender face smiling like an angel into his widening eyes.  And it was the face of Carmin Fanchet!

He made an effort, as if to speak.

“Hush,” she whispered, and he saw something shining in her eyes, and something wet fell upon his face.  “She is returning—­and I will go.  For three days and nights she has not slept, and she must be the first to see you open your eyes.”

She bent over him.  Her soft lips touched his forehead, and he heard her sobbing breath.

“God bless you, David Carrigan!”

Then she was going to the door, and his eyes dropped shut again.  He began to experience pain now, a hot, consuming pain all over him, and he remembered the fight through the path of the fire.  Then the door opened very softly once more, and some one came in, and knelt down at his side, and was so quiet that she scarcely seemed to breathe.  He wanted to open his eyes, to cry out a name, but he waited, and lips soft as velvet touched his own.  They lay there for a moment, then moved to his closed eyes, his forehead, his hair—­and after that something rested gently against him.